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"Story-telling is an ingrained habit; I wouldn't know what else to do. But the mythology that is intriguing today is that of imagined alternatives. Somehow, choice and contingency have landed you where you are, as the person that you are, and the whole process seems so precarious that you look back at those climatic moments when things might have gone differently, when life might have spun off in some other direction, and wonder at this apparently arbitrary outcome"
In this fascinating new piece of fiction, Penelope Lively takes moments from her own life and asks "what if" she had made other choices: what if she hadn't escaped from Alexandria at the outbreak of WWII? What would her life have been like if she had become pregnant when she was 18? If she had married someone else? If she taken a different job? If she had lived her life abroad? In this highly original work, Penelope Lively examines alternative destinies, choices and the moments in our lives when we could have chosen a different path....
From the Inside Flap
else to do. But the mythology that is intriguing today is that of imagined
alternatives. Somehow, choice and contingency have landed you where you
are, as the person that you are, and the whole process seems so precarious
that you look back at those climatic moments when things might have gone
differently, when life might have spun off in some other direction, and
wonder at this apparently arbitrary outcome"
My childhood was spent in a garden. Read the first page Browse Sample Pages
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
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Customer Reviews
In this collection of short stories she develops this to investigate what might have happened if she had made different choices at certain turning points in her own life - and the result is satisfyingly thought provoking.
In each story a different character is put in a similar situation to one she found herself in - the characters are entirely convincing and show different sides to PL's own character. One of her most successful books.
Penelope Lively begins with an introduction to the real circumstances, and ends with an afterward as to the actual outcome. She surmises some directing factor in her childhood that has been constant in her life - that she was programmed to become addicted to reading and writing, to prefer thoughtful, argumentative men and to want children. Unlike her mother who was happy enough to give complete custody to her father during their divorce when Penelope was 12.
'What If' she had made other choices: what if she hadn't escaped from Alexandria at the outbreak of WWII? Penelope Lively's first chapter describes an escape by boat to Capetown as a small child and the resultant changes.
'What If' she had gone to the Arts Ball with an older man dressed in jeans and shirt as a heady rite of passage - but suppose, in those pre-pill days, she had become pregnant, and faced social disgrace as a single mother, or death through a backstreet abortion.
'What If' she was a student on an archaeological dig and didn't believe she would live long because of the threat of the "bomb' in the 1970's. Is this comparable to the threat we feel today of the "bomb"?
'What If" she had not met the Englishman who became her beloved husband, but instead went on to postgraduate school in America and married an American?
'What If', her writing had not been appreciated and her writings had not become novels? Penelope Lively was a lonely child and delved into reading which brought her to her writing.
Penelope Lively goes on "When you're making climactic decisions, they do all cluster in younger life. Most of my crucial decisions seem to have been taken before the age of 25," she reflects. "I have always been fascinated by the business of choice and contingency, the way in which we think we make choices but we're directed by contingent events, from the little things like the car that won't start, to the large directives of history. Choice and contingency land you where you are, and the whole process seems so precarious, you look back at those moments when things might have gone entirely differently, when life might have spun off in some other direction." This book is everybody's daydreams made real. What might have been.. What If? Highly Recommended. prisrob
The reader could be cruel about this book and take Lively at her word. It is a book of exercises to remove writers block or develop fiction which moves... Read more
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